The cloud storage brand unveiled what it is dubbing "chapter two" -- a suite of products that vastly expands the company's reach into the lives of consumers and businesses.

by Kristen V. Brown, McClatchy News Service
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April 10, 2014

Dropbox is making a serious push to be more than just an online storage locker.

On Wednesday, the cloud storage brand unveiled what it is dubbing "chapter two" -- a suite of products that vastly expands the company's reach into the lives of consumers and businesses, including a photo application and an expansion of its mobile email tool.

"We're moving from one app to a family of apps," CEO Drew Houston said at a keynote address held at the company's techno-luxe Dogpatch offices. "This family just got a lot bigger."

The announcement came on the heels of a report that the company recently raised more than $500 million in debt financing (Houston would not comment), and amid suspicions that an initial public offering is on the horizon (its rival Box recently filed paperwork to go public). The company now boasts 275 million users, up from 200 million in November.

The most ambitious product Dropbox announced on Wednesday was Carousel, an app that stores, manages and shares photos across multiple devices.

That multiplatform nimbleness has helped set Dropbox apart from competitors -- its aim is to be a single destination for Web users, from email to taking, sharing and storing photos.

The company also unveiled an expansion of the Mailbox, the mobile email tool it acquired last year. The expansion, still in beta, seeks to reduce email clutter and spam and preserve important attachments in the cloud.

Also announced was the official launch of Dropbox for Business and a preview of what could be a Google Drive competitor, dubbed Project Harmony.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was among those in the audience on Wednesday, where the announcements were made with much fanfare. After the address, he congratulated Mailbox co-founder Gentry Underwood, now a part of Dropbox.